Rocket Lab Succeeds With Helicopter Recovery of Booster

The Rocket Lab guys carried out their mission "There And Back Again" with an abundance of caution, waiting for weather to get as good as it was going to get for their first attempt to recover a booster from an orbital launch.  That caution led to it being delayed from last Wednesday evening (US Eastern Time) until today, May 2nd at 2249 UTC (6:49 ET).  During the launch coverage, the Electron booster was snagged by their Sikorsky S-92 recovery helicopter as captured by a camera on the helicopter.  

This image is a few seconds before the cable (yellow, hanging down from top left) grabbed the parachute, which managed to be out of the frame at the big moment.  As it says in the upper left, this is a replay from earlier in the video stream.  The narrator reported that they successfully caught the booster, but the helicopter's pilot said this didn't feel like any of the practice missions, so the booster was dropped next to a recovery ship to ferry the booster back to land instead of flying it there.   Again, out of an abundance of caution.

As SpaceX has always done, Rocket Lab's streaming host emphasized the real purpose for the mission is delivering customers' satellites to the desired orbits.  Recovering the booster for reuse is secondary to that mission and doesn't mean anything if they don't deliver those satellites.  The argument for recovering boosters is that if they simply use every booster twice, they've doubled the amount of launches they can do with their current factory production levels.  I suspect they'll lower their price, too.  

I think this is a big step for Rocket Lab, so congratulations to everyone involved in making it happen.  Unless I'm having a memory issue, this makes them the only other company launching orbital class rockets that's recovering their boosters.  The Electron is a much smaller launch vehicle than a Falcon 9, at 59 feet tall vs. 230 feet for the F9.  It doesn't have the margin in propellants to use some for landing, with 660 lb to LEO vs. over 50,000 lbs.  To use helicopter recovery vs. slowing with engines and landing on a drone ship is a good solution.  Better than dumping boosters at sea by far.